Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said the death toll in his country from Monday’s devastating earthquake has now reached 16,170, bringing the combined total of fatalities in Turkey and Syria to 19,362. A total of 3,162 have been reported dead by Syrian government officials and a rescue group in the rebel-held north-west of the country.
The first aid convoy to reach north-western Syria since Monday’s devastating earthquake has crossed the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey, with six trucks carrying tents and hygiene products.
The United Nation’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, has said the country, already ravaged by more than a decade of civil war, needs “more of absolutely everything” amid a humanitarian crisis that was already worsening before the quake, adding that emergency aid “must not be politicised”.
Rescue workers in Turkey pulled an injured 60-year-old woman from the rubble of an apartment block in Malatya, 77 hours after the first quake, but hopes of finding more survivors in temperatures as low as -5C are fading. Experts say the survival rate of people trapped in rubble is 74% within 24 hours but falls to 22% after 72 hours and 6% by the fifth day.
Access to Twitter has been restored in Turkey after talks between the social media platform and Turkish authorities. A Turkish infrastructure minister said he had reminded Twitter of its responsibility to cooperate on “on disinformation and false reports, [and take] swift action against fake accounts”.
